Palantir Sales Development Representative (SDR/BDR) Interview Questions

1.Tell me about a time you were handed a goal or project with almost no instructions. How did you figure out where to start?

2.Walk me through a time you had a hard deadline that felt impossible — maybe a big project due at the end of the semester or a quota week that got compressed. What did you actually do?

3.Tell me about a time you had to explain something technically complicated to someone who had no background in it. What was the concept, who was the audience, and how did you approach it?

4.Describe a time you had to get up to speed on an unfamiliar industry or subject quickly — maybe for a class, a job, or a project. How did you do it, and how fast did you actually move?

5.Tell me about a time you identified a gap in a process or approach your team was using — something no one had officially asked you to fix. What did you do with it?

6.Tell me about a stretch where you were consistently missing targets or falling short — not a bad day, but a real rough patch. How long did it last, what did you try, and how did it end?

7.You have 50 accounts to reach out to this week and time for maybe 20 meaningful touches. How do you decide which 20 to prioritize?

8.Estimate how many outbound meetings you'd need to book in a quarter to generate one closed Foundry deal, and walk me through the numbers.

9.You're researching a Fortune 500 manufacturer as a potential Foundry account. The company's public investor presentations say 'digital transformation is a top priority,' but their Glassdoor reviews are full of engineers complaining about siloed legacy systems and no internal AI budget. How do you make sense of these signals, and what does it tell you about how to approach the account?

10.AIP launched and your team is being asked to re-engage a list of 80 commercial accounts that went cold during an earlier Foundry push. What's your diagnostic process before you start outreach — what do you need to know about why they went cold in the first place?

11.Palantir's commercial revenue grew significantly over the past two years, but the average deal size for new commercial logos is much smaller than legacy government contracts. If you were asked to double the number of new commercial logos booked this year, what would be the hardest constraint to overcome — and how would you think about it?

12.A rival AI data platform just announced a major partnership with a hyperscaler and is running aggressive ads targeting Palantir's commercial prospects. Your pipeline accounts start asking you about it. How do you assess whether this is a real competitive threat to your accounts, and what do you actually say to prospects who bring it up?

13.What's the difference between a lead, a prospect, and an opportunity — and at what point would you hand something off to an Account Executive?

14.Walk me through how you'd structure a cold outreach sequence for a VP of Operations at a large manufacturing company you think could be a fit for Foundry. What would each touchpoint look like?

15.You're given a territory of 200 target accounts across commercial and federal verticals. How do you decide which ones to prioritize first, and what information do you actually need to make that call?

16.You've sent a well-researched cold email to a Director of Analytics at a hospital system about AIP, and they reply: 'We already have a data platform — we're all set.' How do you respond, and what are you actually trying to find out?

17.You run a 30-day outbound experiment: 500 touches, 40 replies, 12 meetings booked, 3 qualified opportunities. Walk me through which metrics you'd focus on to improve results next month, and what you'd actually change.

18.A senior SDR on your team is booking twice as many meetings as you using a pitch that downplays Palantir's government and defense work — telling prospects 'we're really focused on commercial AI now.' How do you handle that, and does it matter?

19.A prospect you've been nurturing for three weeks just replied saying they're ready to talk — but they specifically asked for a demo of Gotham, and your AE tells you that account is actually a better fit for Foundry. How do you move forward?

20.You're cold calling a list of defense contractors for a Gotham outreach campaign, and you reach an operator who starts probing you with very specific questions about Gotham's classified data capabilities — things you genuinely don't know the answer to. What do you do?

21.You've identified a VP at a large energy company who looks like a strong Foundry fit — publicly talking about data fragmentation problems at conferences — but every outreach channel has gone cold after two attempts. Your AE wants a meeting booked this quarter. What do you do next?

22.A prospect you booked a meeting for came to the discovery call and told your AE within ten minutes that they have no budget and no active initiative — the AE calls it completely unqualified. The AE is frustrated with you. How do you handle the conversation with the AE, and what do you do differently going forward?

23.A C-suite executive at a federal agency you've been prospecting replies to your LinkedIn message — but instead of interest, they say they've heard Palantir is under congressional scrutiny and want to know if the company is a safe vendor choice before engaging. How do you respond?

24.You've been working an account at a major hospital system for six weeks — you've mapped the org, built rapport with a data director, and the AE considers it a real pipeline opportunity. Then you find out a competitor just signed a pilot with the same health system and your internal champion has gone quiet. What do you do?

25.Tell me about a time you had to get a peer or teammate to do something they weren't technically obligated to do. How did you get them on board?

26.Describe a time when someone more senior than you gave you feedback you disagreed with. What did you do with it?

27.You've just found out that marketing sent a mass email to fifty of your best target accounts about a Foundry webinar — without telling you, and before you'd had a chance to personalize outreach to any of them. How do you handle it?

28.Your AE wants you to focus exclusively on federal accounts this quarter, but your manager is pushing you toward commercial healthcare. They haven't aligned. How do you figure out what to actually work on?

29.You've booked a meeting with a Director of Data at a major defense contractor. The night before the call, you find out through LinkedIn that he's publicly critical of AI vendors overpromising on defense applications — specifically calling out 'AI theater.' How do you adjust your approach for the meeting, and what do you tell your AE?

30.You discover that one of your top pipeline accounts — a large energy company your AE has been tracking for months — has a procurement policy that effectively bans sole-source software contracts above a certain threshold. Your AE doesn't know yet. How do you handle this, and does it change anything about how you work that account?